For a Thousand Reasons
by The Shrapnel
Summary: It doesn't make any sense. And when nothing else does, it makes all the sense in the world. Etcetera/Electra femslash. Have fun.


AUTHOR'S NOTE: Hmm. I've had this idea stuck in my head for a very long while. It's only now that I gathered the courage to type it all up! What with school being a horrible bum and all. Oh goodness I hate school.

Pure unadulterated Etcetera/Electra, which I've found is a very lonely pairing in the Cats section. Searching it up yielded ZERO ENTRIES! Sad!

Anyway, here you go. It's femslash, plain and simple. Like it? Review! Don't like it? Still review! Enraged by the disgusting slash? Go knit something for your grandchildren!

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**FOR A THOUSAND REASONS**

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Life is always best when it doesn't make sense. Sense means spending nice nights at Jennyanydots' place learning boring things like knitting or hiding from her in Epping Forest while practicing the Ball dance. No sense means complete bliss.

Etcetera likes how Electra's favorite thing to do is to sleep over at her place. She shows up, eleven in the humid evening, with some rolled up rags to serve as her pillow. She greets Etcetera's mother with a sweet salute and a "Hey Mrs. Lorum" and scoots into her tiny nook of the den.

Any other pair of best friends would stay up to gossip, or sneak out to meet with the toms. But Etcetera and Electra just like to sleep. Etcetera throws a blanket over to cover the two of them, and they curl up close together and breathe and breathe until her breath is _her _breath and that is the sound that lull them both to dreaming. Sometimes they hold hands, especially if Tumblebrutus had just told a scary story in the after-supper kitten-conference and Etcetera can't stand being alone.

Autumn comes and both Etcetera and Electra become young queens (they share the same birthday, they like that) and they decide to celebrate with a cat-sized campfire in Epping Forest with all the other adolescents. That is the day things went either crazy or amazing – it depends on how much sense you think it makes.

Etcetera is sitting by the fence, crying because her father Asparagus has forgotten her birthday (_what a stupid thing to cry over he forgets everything anyway why would he remember that and oh damn it Cet you're just trying to make yourself feel better_), and probably no one is going to the campfire because Old Deuteronomy had warned them all of a storm.

Electra finds her twenty minutes later, and drags the sniffling little queen to a giant crate that resides at the east of the junkyard, a quiet and old and dusty thing that could have served as a hideout for the less squeamish.

"Wh-what is t-t-this?" she asks in gravelly fragments of voice.

"Just get in," is the impatient reply. The tortoiseshell queen lifts the lid – it had been overturned so the top was now at the side – allowing Etcetera to enter first.

Slits of yellowy light between the planks of the crate allow her a zigzag view of the wall in front of her.

They are drawings and messages on wrinkled paper, on old menus, on candy wrappers.

The notes they passed to each other on boring days.

Sketches of Etcetera by Electra (she was a decent artist), some astoundingly accurate, some in graceful poses, some supplying Etcetera with humorous anatomy or curves she is positive she does _not _have.

But there they all are, words and lines clumped together and stuck to the inside wall of a wooden crate.

"Happy birthday to us," says Electra gently.

They are still in those days where the ache of their desire is still hormonal and not yet conscious. But the glide between those two stages is swift and hurried. They kneel close inside that crate, one of Etcetera's knees slightly in between Electra's legs and their foreheads planted against each other as they bend in the dimness, as the new storm begins to patter upon the planks.

The kiss is as easy as lifting a hand, placing it in that sensitive bend where the back of Electra's head and the top of her neck meet, pulling her close.

It is nothing more than brushing skin, an exchange of static, because Etcetera is too afraid to go any further than that.

She pulls away shyly, staring up at Electra's glass green eyes through her lowered lashes. The dark queen stares back for just as long, before opening her mouth that is so small and red and sweet, to say-

"That kiss was for pansies."

She leans forward and takes the tiny tabby by her waist and gives her the raw kiss that has been waiting all her life.

The next several days make just as much sense.

Electra still comes over late at night, still brings a makeshift pillow, still greets Jellylorum with a salute. The only thing she _doesn't _do is stay. They sit across each other, and talk and hold hands and _maybe _kiss again, but Electra leaves a solid hour later, too afraid that the tension and desire could overcome her.

Anyone one else would ask themselves, _what _tension? _What _desire? But they both know it's there, and it's real, and it's more than either of them can bear.

That Inside Wall of the wooden crate becomes their life. It grows as a patchwork of the days that pass lazily through the junkyard - a knitting needle from Jenny's place. A _Wanted _poster of Macavity. Their old collars, linked together during that last walk through Epping Forest as a sign of friends-forever-whatever.

It is in the grey-white winter when Etcetera crawls in, seeking some warmth, to find the newest addition to the Wall.

Taped to the cold wood, tiny shreds torn right out of a human's dusty Merriam-Webster –

_**ar – ranged**__ [uh-reynjd] – v., planned or prepared_

_**mar-riage **__[me-rij] – n., an intimate association or union_

- and underneath, a shaky but unmistakable portrait of Plato.

Etcetera stumbles out and over the junk piles, and finds Electra leaning against the fence and buried to the toes in the dirty snow.

She lays both her chilled hands on Electra's face, and sees her almost purple lips and tired red eyes. The green in her pupils is faded and tears threaten to peek from the corners of her lashes. Her future manipulated and her pride wounded, the dark queen wipes fiercely at her eyes with her wrist.

"Damn it, Cet," she murmurs, the words forming tiny clouds in the icy air. "…Damn it. I love _you_."

Etcetera takes her wholly, crushes her purple lips against Electra's. There's a gasp as they kiss and they breath and breath until her breath is _her _breath and there is no cold, no space left between the two of them.

She presses her mouth against the dark queen's, mouth-to-mouth until it's more teeth-to-teeth or tongue-to-tongue, she's too numb to tell.

Their knees come crashing to the white-blanket ground, scrape against the snow. From the waist above it is all arms and lips and eyes squeezed shut, as if neither can bear to look upon something that could so easily disappear.

Etcetera holds Electra hard against the fence wire, no matter that it's like thin diamonds of ice pressing at her back. They sink, slowly, into a high that is both nothing and everything, with Etcetera's hands on Electra's legs and Electra pulling so hard at her fur.

"Etcetera," her full name escapes her lips, and it feels so complete and beautiful in a hungry voice, and she speaks it upwards like she's calling out to the sky. "Do it."

She does. And it finally makes sense.


End file.
